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A Horrible Way to Die (2010) [REVIEW]

What a movie title! Obviously my first thought was that this film was going to be filled with some incredible brutal and creepy death scenes, and I was all for it. Some of the stills I saw before its release also got me pretty excited for the look of the movie, and was obviously excited to watch it. I got kind of pissed when I heard that A.J. Bowen was in it, until I realized I thought that A.J. Bowen was someone completely different. A.J. Bowen has been in movies like The Signal and The House of the Devil, whereas I thought it was an actor named Eric Balfour. You might know him as that kind of douche-y looking guy from the remake of Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which also starred Jessica Biel‘s butt. This movie featured some flashbacks, so for the sake of getting the plot in order, I’m going to talk about the story chronologically as opposed to how things were shown in the film. And yes, spoiler alert, I’m going to give away the ending, possibly revealing what is such a horrible way to die.

What did you expect to find when breaking into your crazy boyfriend’s storage unit!?

This chick, played by Amy Seimetz, is dating a dude, played by A.J. Bowen, when she learns that he is a psycho killer person who has just killed someone or some people, so he goes to jail. Seimetz’s character begins attending AA meetings to treat not only her drug and alcohol problems, but also uses it as a means to put her former life, and former boyfriend, behind her. It’s there that she strikes up a relationship with Joe Swanberg‘s character. The two start falling for one another, and do sexy things together, like have sex. Whoa! Bad news is that her former boyfriend has escaped from prison and has been killing people while on his quest to find his former girlfriend, the one responsible for him being in prison in the first place. The new, seemingly happy couple, decide to take refuge in a secluded cabin in the woods to make sure to avoid the psycho ex-boyfriend. Unfortunately, once arriving at the cabin, new boyfriend turns out to be a psycho creep who has planned for this whole thing to happen, along with some of his psycho friends, and they tie the girlfriend up, waiting for the ex-boyfriend to arrive. When he arrives, we learn that this was all an elaborate scheme where three creeps were contacting the psycho boyfriend because they were such big fans of his murders. Now that he sees his ex-girlfriend, the one responsible for his incarceration, he tells these strange creeps that he loves her and he gets all pissed at them for doing that and kills them. After being fatally wounded, the psycho ex releases the captive, being the only character to survive the horrific events.

Paul F. Tompkins A.J. Bowen had a pretty sweet mustache.

During the beginning of the film I was thinking to myself about how much I liked that this was shot on a handheld camera and how it added an extra bit of realism to it. Halfway through the movie I was begging for a fucking tripod. I enjoyed the style until it became almost unbearable, having every single shot bouncing all over the screen and different objects coming into and out of focus the whole time. Had this style been handled with more subtlety then I definitely would have bumped this movie up on the moon scale, but it was just too much. I also chose to tell the plot chronologically, because the bearded and unbearded main actors kept confusing me. I kept thinking that the ex-boyfriend killer, who we saw shaving, was a future version of the “new” boyfriend, and we were jumping back and forth between time. Maybe that’s just my own personal issue of not recognizing actors if there is a beard involved, but I was confused for a good amount of the movie. I did really like the twist at the end, and wasn’t expecting it, so if you have a higher tolerance for camerawork that bounces all over, you might enjoy this clever take on a revenge slasher that has a solid cast and writing throughout.

i dun understand 1 thing , if aj bowens character did not want revenge from his ex gf coz he loved her n all dat(as seen in the last scene) den why d hell did he run away from incarceration in the first place?? (as he does mention it was “better” in prison ?? ) why did he run away from prison in the first place ??? somebody please fill me in thanks. otherwise i really enjoyed this movie.. good one : )

The guys who were intending on murdering her had mentioned in the letters that they were setting an escape for him, so that way he could come and take part in the murder. Since AJ Bowen’s character still loved his girlfriend, he escaped so he could protect her and prevent her from getting killed.